Today we're happy to announce the much-anticipated launch of Raspberry Pi Compute Module 5, the modular version of our flagship Raspberry Pi 5 single-board computer, priced from just $45.

An unexpected journey
We founded the Raspberry Pi Foundation back in 2008 with a mission to give today's young people access to the sort of approachable, programmable, affordable computing experience that I benefitted from back in the 1980s. The Raspberry Pi computer was, in our minds, a spiritual successor to the BBC Micro, itself the product of the BBC's Computer Literacy Project. But just as the initially education-focused BBC Micro quickly found a place in the wider commercial computing marketplace, so Raspberry Pi became a platform around which countless companies, from startups to multi-billion-dollar corporations, chose to innovate. Today, between seventy and eighty percent of Raspberry Pi units go into industrial and embedded applications.

Following the enthusiastic market response and positive reviews of the revolutionary Flashstor series NAS, ASUSTOR Inc. has released all-new all-M.2 SSD NAS, the Flashstor Gen2 series, which includes both the Flashstor 6 Gen2 and Flashstor 12 Pro Gen2. The Flashstor Gen2 series brings radical hardware upgrades to meet the demands of enthusiasts and professionals. The Flashstor Gen2 series brand new hardware to achieve ultimate performance. The new Flashstor Gen2 series is powered by AMD's 6 nm Quad-Core Ryzen Embedded V3C14 which clocks up to 3.8 GHz. This new CPU delivers efficient, yet high performance, which along with high-speed I/O connectivity enables you to make the most out of your ASUSTOR NAS.

The Flashstor Gen2 series come with 10-Gigabit Ethernet, dual USB4 ports in an ASUSTOR first. USB4 is so fast, that it helps to fully unleash the high speeds offered by the M.2 SSDs. The USB4 ports are also compatible with Thunderbolt devices, as well as direct attach technology, extended possibilities that surpass the imagination of professionals and creators.

Qualcomm Technologies, Inc., a global leader in wireless technology innovation, today announced the launch of the Qualcomm Networking Pro A7 Elite, a groundbreaking wireless networking platform set to transform how people will experience their networks with edge AI integration. Leveraging an AI co-processor with 40 TOPS of NPU processing power, the platform delivers elevated Wi-Fi 7 connectivity and networking performance, while also equipping connected devices with powerful and centralized generative AI processing capabilities.

This transformative integration of computing power into the network unlocks opportunities for operators and enterprises to deploy innovative applications and services in areas such as security and surveillance, energy management and automation, personalized virtual assistants, aging in place and health monitoring among others. Edge AI can enhance privacy by processing sensitive information on the gateway, while enabling personalization through contextualized understanding of the environment and immediacy through near real-time responses. This approach unlocks the power of advanced AI for more devices, even legacy ones, enabling a more reliable and harmonized user experience across connected devices.

TerraMaster, a professional brand focused on providing innovative storage products for homes and businesses, recently introduced the F2-424, a new upgrade of F2-423. The brand-new F2-424 adopts the Intel Celeron N95 4-core 4-thread processor, 8GB DDR5 memory, two 2.5GB network ports, two M.2 NVMe sockets, and adds a USB Type-C host interface and a USB Type A interface, achieving a 40% improvement in overall performance compared to the previous generation.

The F2-424 will come with the new generation TOS 5.1 operating system and can be smoothly upgraded to the TerraMaster TOS 6 operating system in the nearly future. With its robust features and state-of-the-art technology, the F2-424 NAS redefines data storage and management for both personal and business users.

Asustor unveils the NAS for everyone—the Drivestor 2 Lite. The Drivestor 2 Lite and Drivestor Pro Gen 2 use efficient Realtek RTD1619B Quad-Core CPUs. The increased CPU frequency at 1.7 GHz and increases in the performance of the GPU make this the entry-level NAS to have inside your home or small office. Take advantage of blistering speeds of up to 2.5 Gbps on the Drivestor Pro Gen 2 when connecting with a compatible switch in a 2.5-Gigabit ecosystem to instantly upgrade your high-speed home network environment.

Btrfs for ASUSTOR NAS devices featuring Realtek CPUs is here! Schedule or manually create Btrfs snapshots in Snapshot Center to help protect data in real time and restore data. If data is encrypted by ransomware, snapshots can be the first line of defense towards recovery and is often able to turn back the clock and reverse changes. In addition to snapshots, the new Drivestor Pro Gen 2 and Drivestor 2 Lite NAS devices continue ASUSTOR's commitment to easy, safe and convenient backup technologies, when combined with snapshots, make your data safe and secure.

CTL, a global cloud-computing solution leader for education, announced today the introduction of the new CTL Chromebook NL73 Series. The new Chromebook, incorporating the Intel Processor N100 and Intel Processor N200, enables IT professionals to equip schools with the cloud-computing performance they need today and with the sustainability required for tomorrow.

"Since Chromebooks were widely deployed during the pandemic to remote students, new applications have come into use, requiring more processing power and cybersecurity measures than ever before," noted Erik Stromquist, CEO of CTL. "Chromebook users will need to level up their technology in 2024. Our new NL73 Series delivers not only the power to meet these new requirements but also CTL's flexible configuration options, purchase options, and whole lifecycle management services for the ultimate in sustainability."

Today marks the launch of not just two new incredibly well-designed NAS devices, but also two new features brand new to the ASUSTOR line of NAS devices with ARM processors. The introduction of the Drivestor 2 Pro Gen2 and Drivestor 4 Pro Gen2 come with an upgraded SoC, providing 21% more performance, which increases read and write speeds and performance for the features and apps available for the Drivestor Pro Gen2. The Drivestor Pro Gen2 series comes with 2.5-Gigabit Ethernet, hot-swappable hard drive bays, hardware transcoding, tool-free design and more! The upgraded iGPU found in the Drivestor Pro Gen2 now gives even better performance when transcoding multimedia.

The all-new Drivestor Pro Gen2 series comes with a new killer feature. Btrfs is now supported on the Drivestor Pro Gen2, a first for ASUSTOR NAS devices running ARM CPUs. Btrfs helps protect data by enabling snapshots of data at certain points in time and is able to rewind the clock should any unintentional modifications be made and restore data if needed.

GL.iNet unveiled its latest Wi-Fi 6 AX6000 home router, Flint 2 (GL-MT6000). Designed to fulfill scenarios such as heavy data transfers, hyper hundreds of device connections, and ultra-low latency gaming environments, this device is a modern home and office router capable of
high-performance demanding connectivity.

The Flint 2 is ideal for users with high speed, capacity, and stability requirements. With dual band AX6000, up to 160 MHz bandwidth, 4x4 MU-MIMO support, and eight high-power FEMs. Not only does the Flint 2 extend Wi-Fi coverage to meet the Wi-Fi 6 high-speed, along with the dual 2.5G ports, also allows this device to access 2.5G high-speed broadband with 2.5G intranet transmission capability easily.

ASUSTOR Inc. today launched two of its fastest NAS devices ever, the all-NVMe Flashstor 6 and Flashstor 12 Pro. The biggest feature of the Flashstor series NAS is that this is ASUSTOR's first dedicated PCIe 3.0 M.2 NVMe SSD NAS, which brings unmatched performance in a NAS device. The Flashstor 6 has six M.2 slots for NVMe SSDs and dual 2.5GbE for amazing performance while the Flashstor 12 Pro comes with twelve M.2 slots for NVMe SSDs combined with 10GbE for unmatched speed. Both Flashstor models are equipped with Intel's newest generation of 10 nm Quad-Core Intel Celeron N5105 that boosts up to 2.9 GHz. With 4 GB of energy-efficient DDR4 -2933 RAM that provides 40% more efficiency and dual USB 3.2 Gen 2x1, the Flashstor ensures that bottlenecks are a thing of the past.

The advantages of the Flashstor include, but are not limited to, are its low weight to be used as portable storage while efficiently cooled and quiet. The Flashstor series is specifically designed M.2 SSDs and the chassis makes it easy to add or remove SSDs by removing the chassis screws. The design of the Flashstor not only makes it look great in any environment, but also contains efficient hardware that ensures it can chew through virtually any storage or editing workload thrown at it while keeping hardware and SSDs cool. For extra cooling, the Flashstor comes with heatsinks to help more powerful SSDs to receive the cooling they need for optimal performance while remaining quiet at as low as 18.7 decibels. This ensures that content creation and consumption is enjoyed without interference.

CAES, a leader in advanced mission-critical electronics for aerospace and defense, has announced that its GR740 quad-core LEON4FT SPARC V8 Microprocessor has been launched onboard the Rashid Rover on December 11 and is now heading to the moon. The Rashid Rover was developed by the Mohammed Bin Rashid Space Center and is traveling to the moon onboard the Mission 1 lunar lander as part of the HAKUTO-R lunar exploration program. The mission of the four-wheel rover, weighing only 10 kilograms or 22 pounds, will last one lunar day, or 14 Earth days. Its objective is to study the properties of lunar soil, the petrography and geology of the moon, dust movement, and the lunar surface plasma condition and photoelectron sheath.

The GR740 Microprocessor is embedded in the Camera Interface Board (CIB) that is used to control the four cameras onboard the Rashid Rover through an embedded SpaceWire router switch. The GR740 board has been developed by CAES together with AAC Clyde Space. The CIB is connected to a Sirius TCM board, also developed by AAC Clyde Space, which stores and manages the captured and processed images before downloading them to ground.

Leveraging its experience in producing innovative IoT solutions, AAEON has announced the newest addition to its IoT Gateway product line with the launch of the
SRG-IMX8P. Powered by Arm NXP i.MX8M Plus Quad-Core Cortex -A53 and Cortex -M7 processors, the SRG-IMX8P harnesses the benefits of an integrated neural processing unit capable of producing 2.3 TOPS. Further, the inclusion of the Arm Cortex -M7 processor offers real-time calculation functionality to enhance machine learning, drastically reducing visual inferencing time for object detection to just 13 ms.

The SRG-IMX8P is also equipped with an industry-leading onboard DDR4L system memory of up to 8 GB, 16 GB eMMC storage and a Micro SD slot for further system storage expansion. Differentiating the SRG-IMX8P from its competitors is the inclusion of two USB 3.0, two RJ-45 GbE, and two CAN-FD ports. These features produce the ideal configuration for advanced edge gateway solutions in Industry 4.0 settings such as vehicle assembly and factory automation applications. The USB 3.0 and RJ-45 LAN ports support more sophisticated camera and sensor peripherals, while the CAN-FD slots enable users to transmit and receive sensor data via the SRG-IMX8P's I/O directly, negating the need for USB-to-CANBus conversion.

In celebration of Pi Day, OnLogic, a global industrial computing manufacturer and solution provider known for their reliable, orange industrial PCs, has announced that their new Factor 201 Raspberry Pi-powered device is available for pre-order. In addition, they've released more details about the next model in the Factor 200 Series, the Factor 202. Both devices are powered by the Raspberry Pi Compute Module 4, which was developed specifically for industrial products.

"We're delighted that OnLogic has chosen to develop the Factor 201 around Raspberry Pi. Using Raspberry Pi Compute Module 4 with their custom-designed carrier boards and industrial enclosure has allowed OnLogic to offer their customers flexible and reliable solutions, and we see Raspberry Pi hardware being increasingly widely adopted in industry with products like this one," said Gordon Hollingworth, Chief Product Officer at Raspberry Pi Ltd.

Intel's upcoming Core i3-12100 and i3-12300 quad-core processors that form the value-end of the 12th Gen Core "Alder Lake-S" desktop processor family, pack an incredible mix of performance for their segment, which puts them ahead of six-core parts from the previous-generation, according to performance testing on the ChipHell forums. The two chips are based on the "H0" silicon, and feature four "Golden Cove" P-cores with HyperThreading enabled; no E-cores, and 12 MB of shared L3 cache. From what we can tell, the i3-12100 and i3-12300 are segment only by a 100 MHz maximum boost frequency value, and possibly at the iGPU-level.

Among the tests run by ChipHell are Cinebench R20, Cinebench R23, CPU-Z bench, CS:GO; and power/thermal testing using AIDA64. Right off the bat, we see the two chips flex their high IPC in the CPU-Z bench, scoring 687 points (i3-12100), and 702.5 points (i3-12300). An AMD "Zen 3" based quad-core chip, such as the OEM-only Ryzen 3 PRO 5350G, should score roughly 620 points, while the slowest "Rocket Lake" part, the i5-11400, only does 566 points. The multi-threaded test sees scores ranging between 3407 to 3482 points for the two.

In order to offer even more options for industrial hardware users, IoT hardware manufacturer and solution provider, OnLogic (onlogic.com), has announced two new additions to their popular ML100 Series of compact fanless computers. The ML100G-53 and ML100G-41 are powered by embedded processing platforms from Intel and AMD. The new devices build on the company's experience in highly-reliable, passively cooled computers for industrial, IoT, and edge computing applications.

"The amount of performance we're able to offer through integrating the latest processing platforms in the NUC and mini-PC footprints is astounding," said Mike Walsh, OnLogic Industrial Product Line Manager. "The ML100 Series has been, quite literally, a great fit for our customers looking to integrate powerful computing in space constrained industrial environments. Paired with our Hardshell fanless technology for thermal management and reliability, the newest additions to our ML100 Series will offer the kind of flexibility our customers and integrators demand, while letting them choose the ideal processing option for their particular application."

ASUSTOR Inc. has announced the Lockerstor 4RD, 4RS and 12RD, a brand new enterprise-grade four bay 1U and twelve bay 2U rack-mounted NAS. Equipped with an enterprise-grade Intel Atom Quad-Core processor and 8 GB of DDR4-2133 RAM, which is expandable to 128 GB, for a stable and reliable cloud storage solution. The Lockerstor 4RD, 4RS and 12RD are equipped with dual Gigabit and dual 2.5-Gigabit Ethernet ports that attain extremely stable performance while also helping to increase productivity in a medium office. Read and write to your Lockerstor 4RD, 4RS and 12RD at incredible speeds of up to 591 MB/s and 565 MB/s respectively using link aggregation.

The Lockerstor 4RD, 4RS and 12RD are a complete backup solution. Not only do the Lockerstor 4RD, 4RS and 12RD act as an amazing backup solution for medium businesses, the NAS itself also contains backup hardware to ensure minimal downtime. The dual backup power supplies provide redundancy to ensure that one can go offline without downtime, ensuring your employees remain able to access their data. The multiple Ethernet ports also provide excellent redundancy and four are included. Two Ethernet ports are Gigabit while the other two are 2.5-Gigabit, providing a fast lane for higher priority traffic while maintaining protection from downtime.

Leading global industrial computer hardware manufacturer and IoT solution provider, OnLogic, has announced four new compact, industrial and rugged fanless computing platforms powered by the new Intel Atom x6000E, Celeron N and Pentium J series processors formerly known as "Elkhart Lake". The Helix 310, Helix 330, Karbon 410 and Karbon 430 join OnLogic's line of highly customizable, passively cooled devices for use in Industry 4.0 applications.

"We've been working with Intel for over a decade to build solutions for the ever-evolving Industrial IoT landscape," says OnLogic VP of Engineering Michael Kleiner. "Helix 300 and Karbon 400 have been engineered to take advantage of the new features built into the latest generation of Intel processors to enhance IoT functionality. From machine learning and artificial intelligence, to advanced SCADA or networking, the combination of Intel technology and the plethora of configuration possibilities we've built into these systems means users can tailor a platform to their exact needs. The specialized solutions our clients will build with these news platforms promise to change the way goods are made, data is acted upon, and business is done in virtually every industry."

The idea of working and learning from home, which at one point felt temporary, has for many of us started to feel more permanent. Even as some people in cities around the world return to work and schools in person, many others have found themselves reorganizing homes to create makeshift offices and classrooms. Whether your commute is across the house or across town, the PC continues to play an integral role in keeping all of us connected to our work, school, and lives - and each person in the household needs one.

As we continue to expand our Surface family of devices with the new Surface Laptop Go and updates to Surface Pro X, our goal is to design a Surface for every person, work style and location. To give every person in your household or organization a laptop that's not just something you need to use, but something you want to use. A virtual office you want to be in, a virtual classroom that engages you to learn, a place you can play your favorite game or watch a movie - with a bright vibrant screen, a fluid and comfortable keyboard, high quality cameras and mics, and the versatility of touch screens.

ASUSTOR Inc. has announced the release of the rack-mounted Lockerstor 12R Pro and Lockerstor 16R Pro equipped Intel's 9th Gen Xeon E-2224 3.40 GHz Quad-Core processor. The Lockerstor 12R Pro and 16R Pro come with 8 GB DDR4-2666 ECC UDIMM and supports a maximum of 128 GB, greatly improving computing power and system stability of virtual machines and Docker applications. In addition to the four Gigabit Ethernet ports, the Lockerstor 12R Pro and 16R Pro also provide three PCIe slots that support 10/25/40/50GbE network cards and SAS cards increasing speeds to unprecedented levels. The rich variety of I/O include six USB 3.2 Gen2 ports, of which four are Type-A and two are Type-C, and dual M.2 slots for SSD caching to enable the Lockerstor 12R Pro and 16R Pro take advantage of some of our fastest speeds ever.

The 80 Plus Platinum 550-watt dual redundant power supplies and four Gigabit Ethernet ports can be configured with failover to ensure the reliability of power supply and transmission, and also through high power conversion efficiency (up to 94%) Provide high-efficiency power supply and virtualized storage stability, allowing enterprises to control costs and protect the environment. The four Gigabit Ethernet ports combined provide up to 451 MB/s and 451 MB/s read and write speeds. The Lockerstor 12R Pro and 16R Pro support up to 192 TB and 256 TB respectively and the support for large amounts of storage space fully accommodates rapidly increasing storage needs, meeting the needs of the present and the future simultaneously.

ASUSTOR Inc. today launched the Lockerstor 2 and 4 featuring a 2.0 GHz Gemini Lake Intel Celeron J4125 Quad-Core processor as well as with 4 GB of DDR4-2400 RAM. The DDR4 RAM found in the Lockerstor 2 and 4 is 30% faster and uses 40% less power than DDR3 RAM. As with the Lockerstor 8 and 10, the Lockerstor 2 and 4 come with two M.2 NVMe SSD slots and feature dual 2.5-Gigabit Ethernet ports to unlock maximum performance out of your NAS. The dual 2.5-Gigabit Ethernet ports also support Link Aggregation that increases performance to up to 5 Gbps.

The Lockerstor 2 and 4, building on the success of their predecessors features tweaked improvements to the rock-solid ASUSTOR chassis design. Hardware features include HDMI 2.0a with support for 10-bit 4K hardware decoding, 2.5-Gigabit Ethernet and Wake on LAN, Wake on WAN. Wake on LAN and Wake on WAN optimizes power usage, helping companies control costs and maximize hardware longevity. The Lockerstor 2 and 4 come with two and four bays and supports up to 32 and 64 TB respectively. An additional 192 TB can be installed with three AS6004U units. ASUSTOR's MyArchive cold backup technology turns hard drives into a hot swappable hard drive for offsite backups, ensuring data security.

The leading global motherboard & graphics card manufacturer, ASRock, a pleasure to launch brand new compact Mini PC - Mars Series. Supports up to Intel Core i5 Quad-Core processor, 32 GB DDR4-2666 MHz, PCIe NVMe M.2 SSD, 2.5-inch hard drive, and wireless connectivity; all implies into 0.7-liter chassis with 26 mm height.

ASRock Mars offers abundant USB devices connectivity, features a total of 7 USB ports, including one Type-C port; In addition, the native SD card reader and dual display outputs to provide more productive and convenience.

QNAP Systems, Inc. (QNAP ) today unveiled the TS-963X, a 9-bay NAS with an AMD quad-core 2.0 GHz processor, up to 8 GB RAM (upgradeable to 16 GB), and 10GBASE-T connectivity supporting five connection speeds (10G/5G/2.5G/1G/100M). The compact TS-963X is the size of a 5-bay NAS but accommodates five 3.5-inch HDD bays and four 2.5-inch SSDs bays that deliver high-performance, high-capacity storage potential including automatic file/data tiering based on access frequency (Qtier Technology). The TS-963X is ideal for small businesses and organizations to boost data access efficiency, network transmission speed and to meet demands of mission-critical tasks.

"The TS-963X is designed to enhance the everyday workflows of small businesses and organizations at a budget-friendly price," noted Jason Hsu, Product Manager of QNAP. "The 10GBASE-T/NBASE-T port and four 2.5-inch bays for SSDs can all significantly improve performance, allowing the total cost of ownership to remain reasonable and affordable for most businesses," he added.

Razer today has also announced a revamp of their Blade Stealth laptop, which sees the introduction of the latest generation of Intel processors. The new Razer Blade Stealth features the i7-8550U processor - a quad-core, Hyper Threading (HT) enabled processor that brings eight threads to bear - albeit clocked at a low 1.8 GHz base and a staggering 4.0 GHz max single-core Turbo. This means this is the first version of the Razer Blade Stealth to sport such a core configuration, which should aid in both gaming and production environments. Don't let yourself be fooled, though - the 8th Gen here doesn't mean Coffee Lake. Intel has done all of us the favor of mixing things up a little, and their mobile 8th Gen architecture is actually "Kaby Lake Refresh".

Intel Core i3-8300 could be the company's first quad-core processor to bear the Core i3 badge. Based on the 14 nm "Coffee Lake-S" silicon, This SKU could be priced in the upper-band of the Core i3 lineup (around the USD $150 mark), offering four cores. As if that isn't surprising enough, this quad-core chip even reportedly features HyperThreading, enabling 8 logical CPUs for the OS to deal with.

For the first time, a Core i3 part will have more logical CPUs than a Core i5 part, which lacks HyperThreading. Such a feature disparity won't be new, as current Core i3 dual-core SKUs feature HyperThreading, which Core i5 quad-core parts lack. The i3-8300, however, will lack Turbo Boost, which Core i5 SKUs will feature. The chip reportedly features a clock speed of 4.00 GHz. The L3 cache amount and TDP of this chip remain unknown at this point. Intel could launch Core i3 "Coffee Lake" processors only by late-2017 or early-2018.

We've been chasing AMD Zen for a long time now. Our older report from April 2015 uncovered an important detail about component organization on Zen processors - the clumping of four CPU cores into a highly-specialized, possibly indivisible subunit referred to then, as the "Zen Quad-core Unit." Some of the latest presentations about the architecture, following AMD's "performance reveal" event from earlier this month, shed more light on this quad-core unit.

AMD is referring to the Zen quad-core unit as the CPU-Complex (CCX). Each CCX is a combination of four independent CPU cores. Unlike on "Bulldozer," a "Zen" core does not share any of its number-crunching machinery with neighboring cores. Each "Zen" core has a dedicated L2 cache of 512 KB, and four Zen cores share an 8 MB L3 cache. AMD will control core-counts by controlling CCX units. A "Summit Ridge" socket AM4 processor features two CCX units (making up eight cores in all), sharing a dual-channel DDR4 memory controller, and the platform core-logic (chipset), complete with an integrated PCI-Express root complex. Socket AM4 APUs will feature one CCX unit, and an integrated GPU in place of the second CCX. With this, AMD is able to bring the two diverse desktop platforms under one socket.

QNAP Systems, Inc. today announced the release of the powerful 8-bay business NAS TS-831X that features two built-in 10GbE SFP+ ports to fully support 10GbE high-speed networks as a cost-effective NAS solution. The TS-831X further supports VJBOD (Virtual JBOD) to introduce an economical way to utilize unused NAS storage space for expanding the storage capacity of other QNAP NAS. Taking advantage of TS-831X's native support of Container Station, organizations can rapidly develop and deploy Internet of Things (IoT) apps to create more business opportunities.

The TS-831X uses an Annapurna Labs Alpine AL-314 quad-core 1.4 GHz ARM Cortex-A15 processor, and features 8GB/16GB DDR3 RAM (upgradable to 16GB), RAID 5/6 support, hardware-accelerated encryption and an SSD cache. It is 10GbE-ready with two built-in 10GbE SFP+ ports, and allows users to install a third 10GbE port via the extra PCIe slot for flexible high-speed network deployment.